News

Press, recognition and the work in use.

Announcements and press material, the awards the work has received, and periodic notes on what the completed buildings carry once they are occupied.

Press & Media

Aerial view of the campus at dusk with interior lights on, the road running past and hills receding to the horizon

Press release September 2026

Umodzi wins the 2026 CAA Environmental Impact Award

Umodzi Epicentre was named Overall Winner of the 2026 Commonwealth Association of Architects Environmental Impact Award, announced in Auckland, New Zealand, on 9 September during the CAA’s 60th Anniversary General Assembly.

This project has been a love letter to Zambia. Remembering the red clay bricks and colours of the land as a girl, and now as an adult knowing the power of what a single building can achieve.

Nikki McCullagh, The Patter Foundation

Umodzi Epicentre CAA certificate (PDF)

Press enquiries: Tawanda Kamuna, Chief Executive Officer, info@kamuna.design. High-resolution photography of the campus, construction and on-site brick making is available on request. Photography by Iwan Baan and Gareth Bentley.

Recognition

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Notes on return

What the completed work carries once it is occupied, recorded periodically. Only built work appears here, because only occupation can show what a building returns.

A tailoring workshop under a thatched roof on timber trusses, people at sewing machines along the tables and a group seated at a curved bench

Notes on return April 2026

A year into use, the Epicentre reaches 26,601 people

Across 126 villages in 26 clusters. Twenty-one village-led early learning centres now run from the campus, twenty of them beyond it, with more than 1,060 children enrolled and fed daily. The clinic, the training rooms and the demonstration farm are in continuous use, and the figures are the community's own, recorded in April 2026.

Umodzi Epicentre

A woman carrying greens walking along the base of the thatched maternity building in late afternoon sun

Notes on return 2025

Handover at Vubwi, after six years of building

Now extending across 16.40 hectares, the campus comprises 4,500 square metres built in phases from 2019 using bricks moulded and fired on site by the community. It is powered off-grid by solar energy, with water drawn from two boreholes. What it returns will be answered over years, not at completion. Future notes will report on the thatch, planting and the farm through its first full cycle.